Arthur grinned, and Del colored.  “A lot father knows about Ross as he really is,” said he.  “Oh, he’s clever about what he lets father see.  However, you do admit there’s some other ideal of man than successful workingman.”

“Of course!” said Adelaide.  “I’m not so silly and narrow as you try to make out.  Only, I prefer a combination of the two.  And I think Ross is that, and I hope and believe he’ll be more so—­afterwards.”

Adelaide’s tone was so judicial that Arthur thought it discreet not to discuss his friend and future brother-in-law further.  “He isn’t good enough for Del,” he said to himself.  “But, then, who is?  And he’ll help her to the sort of setting she’s best fitted for.  What side they’ll put on, once they get going!  She’ll set a new pace—­and it’ll be a grand one.”

At the top of the last curve in the steep road up from Deer Creek the horses halted of themselves to rest; Arthur and his sister gazed out upon the vast, dreamy vision—­miles on miles of winding river shimmering through its veil of silver mist, stately hills draped in gauziest blue.  It was such uplifting vistas that inspired the human imagination, in the days of its youth, to breathe a soul into the universe and make it a living thing, palpitant with love and hope; it was an outlook that would have moved the narrowest, the smallest, to think in the wide and the large.  Wherever the hills were not based close to the water’s edge or rose less abruptly, there were cultivated fields; and in each field, far or near, men were at work.  These broad-hatted, blue-shirted toilers in the ardent sun determined the turn of Adelaide’s thoughts.

“It doesn’t seem right, does it,” said she, “that so many—­almost everybody—­should have to work so hard just to get enough to eat and to wear and a place to sleep, when there’s so much of everything in the world—­and when a few like us don’t have to work at all and have much more than they need, simply because one happened to be born in such or such conditions.  I suppose it’s got to be so, but it certainly looks unjust—­and silly.”

“I’m not sure the workers haven’t the best of it,” replied Arthur.  “They have the dinner; we have only the dessert; and I guess one gets tired of only desserts, no matter how great the variety.”

“It’s a stupid world in lots of ways, isn’t it?”

“Not so stupid as it used to be, when everybody said and thought it was as good as possible,” replied he.  “You see, it’s the people in the world that make it stupid.  For instance, do you suppose you and I, or anybody, would care for idling about and doing all sorts of things our better judgment tells us are inane, if it weren’t that most of our fellow-beings are stupid enough to admire and envy that sort of thing, and that we are stupid enough to want to be admired and envied by stupid people?”

“Did you notice the Sandys’s English butler?” asked Adelaide.

“Did I?  I’ll bet he keeps every one in the Sandys family up to the mark.”